Bonsai Forum

TOPIC: First styling on Nursery stock conifers

I recently bought two trees at a local nursery. Same species , one smaller and one larger. I am not sure what specis they are: This is what it looked like before styling
Im not sure if it is a juniper or some kind of spruce.. nurseries here never have any info on the plants they sell. This is called a pine here.. its very anoying. Anyway, i decided to style it as a formal upright.. but i decieded to leave some of the growth it had near the trunk and also one long branch near the top because I figured that since it had some disturbance to the roots that this untouched new growth would help it develop more roots and reinvigorate it. Im not sure if this was the right thing to do. The new buds have pushed very little new growth in these areas,, andsome of the branches i pruned heavily are not looking like they will survive..

Should I remove these branches or would they actually help the tree?..
I styled the smaller one a few weeks earlier and removed all the branches i didnt want in the design. It is doing very well withplenty of new growth all around..

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Thans for the help. I appreciate honest and direct answers..easier to learn from.. I thought so also about the vertical growth... I was hoping maybe when there is more ramification I would be able to pinch the growth back and it might look fine.. As far as the piss bow , not much i can do.. I guess I was thinking that might correct itself also with age.. but.. probably not.

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This is another tree I styled recently. I deduced this was some kind of Thuja.. but again. not sure. In this case I left the main central trunk , removed all the side growth and left the foliage on the very top. The idea being that it will continue to help thicken the entire trunk but still allow some energy to go to the lower branches I did keep. This has less of the piss bow although some branches do have it...

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Nicely done. The branch selection and placement looks OK. You kept the branches fairly straight, which is appropriate, as the trunk itself is straight too.

The tree is a bit young and thin though. I do not think the top is going to help much, as you have left very little foliage on it.
Still, I do see a little tree in there, so you must have done something right

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Very nice work, with all of the things I have learned that you shouldn't cut off branches make them into jinns, if the look isn't what you want they can always be removed, you can also wire and place jinns were you want them that suits the style your going for.

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Thanks.. Yes I guess I shouldnt have taken ALL the foliage from the top .. I figured I just wanted to leave the growing tip so it would keep growing vertically without taking all the energy from the bottom par of the tree... that was my reasoning behind it anyway.. Ill see once itstarts getting new growth wehther it will add thickness and if not ill take it out..

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dmey wrote: Thanks.. Yes I guess I shouldnt have taken ALL the foliage from the top .. I figured I just wanted to leave the growing tip so it would keep growing vertically without taking all the energy from the bottom par of the tree... that was my reasoning behind it anyway.. Ill see once itstarts getting new growth wehther it will add thickness and if not ill take it out..

Nice job!. The trunk is not going to get thicker. The only way to get that trunk thicker would have been to let the tree grow freely in the ground for a few years. Just keep this in your mind:

* Once you style a tree to become a Bonsai, forget about greatly increasing thickness of the trunk.

The thickness of the trunk is the first thing you must achieve when creating a Bonsai, then you go from there. Yes there are methods to get some thickness on the trunk after you've knock off branches and top. You can use sacrifice branches, but this is not going to get you that much thickness, this will only improve details, help a bit with tapper and such.

You did a great job with this little tree. It will look young and have a thin trunk. Just go from there, don't expect it to become a masterpiece. Make use of sacrifice branches and work on ramification, in a few years it will look very nice, but again, don't expect a masterpiece with a huge trunk. eventually you will have more experience, and will acquire more serious material, with thicker trunks.

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eangola wrote: ...The thickness of the trunk is the first thing you must achieve when creating a Bonsai...

Sometimes I get the feeling that there is a rule on this Forum to forget about nebari.
While all the books cry "Nebari first!" or "From the botton up!" , here I keep reading "Trunk is the Master!".
Perhaps I am reading the wrong books.

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eangola wrote: ...The thickness of the trunk is the first thing you must achieve when creating a Bonsai...

Sometimes I get the feeling that there is a rule on this Forum to forget about nebari.
While all the books cry "Nebari first!" or "From the botton up!" , here I keep reading "Trunk is the Master!".
Perhaps I am reading the wrong books.

I think of nebari as much more advanced. First you worry about getting trunk, right height, branch placement, ramification etc etc... then you master nebari. I haven't been much involved with nebari myself, because I am not there yet, so I don't know much about it. But, when creating a real nice Bonsai I've read your work on the trunk AND nebari. Then the rest. Beginners shouldn't worry too much about nebari.

If you have good nebari but no trunk, you dont have a nice tree. If you have a nice trunk but not nebari, you have a tree.

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